Burning Up like the Sun Used to Say Goodbye
by ZeeLizard
Summary: Geli Gonzalez didn't know what to do when she woke up to a room full of smoke. She wasn't sure how she could escape her house besides jumping from the window. She didn't realize that one simple mistake would change the course of history, unless a lonely man in his TARDIS were to intervene.


**This was a present fic written for my friend's birthday.**

Burning Up Like the Sun Used to Say Goodbye

I woke up to the smell of smoke, the bonfire stench assaulting my nose as I opened my eyes and struggled to peer through the gray fog. The fumes dived down my throat when I opened my mouth to breathe. I began to cough so hard my esophagus felt raw and I could feel the hacks down in my chest. My body was paralyzed for a minute as the smoke continued to circulate through my room. After the initial heart-stopping fear, adrenaline kicked in.

I rolled off my bed, landing on my stomach. I reached for my cell phone, which was charging on my night stand, and began to crawl towards my door. The fire escape techniques I'd learned in grade school were flying through my mind, reminding me exactly what my every move should be.

When I reached the door, I felt it with the back of my hand. I placed it against the wood for a second before jerking it away, audibly wincing from the pain of the heat. "Shit," I whispered, cradling my hand against my chest.

I looked around my room, hoping to find something to put over my face so I could run from the house, but instead I found myself surrounded by flammable object without a fire extinguisher or water bottle in sight. I pressed my hand to my mouth, covering my nose as well, to prevent the smoke from filling my lungs.

My eyes darted around the room, desperate to find a way to get out. After a while, my gaze settled on the window in the corner of my room. I could feel my heartbeat quicken and swallowed hard, crawling across my room. With every passing second, more and more smoke filled the room and I could feel the beads of sweat forming on my skin, both from the heat overwhelming my body and the fear causing my bones to quake.

I pressed my body up, balancing on my knees, and slid the window open. I pulled my body up, using the window sill as leverage to hold my body weight. There was at least a 17 foot drop to the ground, even with the disorientation the smoke was causing my vision.

"Seventeen feet won't kill you, Geli," I whispered to myself, coughing into my elbow. All I could see was the dead grass, daring me to do it. "Break a bone, maybe two, but you won't die." The pep talk wasn't working.

The wood on my door was cracking. I didn't have much longer before the flames would be consuming my room, and my body along with it. Crossing myself and taking in a deep breath, I jumped.

* * *

The pain registered in my brain before the alien setting did. It was in my left leg and unbearable, so bad that tears immediately came to my eyes. I rolled onto my right side, taking measured breaths to avoid screaming. I brought my hand down to my leg, touching the tender flesh and wincing audibly. A break, it was definitely a break.

"Hey, hey, hey," a man said as he rushed to my side from across whatever room we were in. "Don't touch it, I'm going to help you." He had dark, disheveled hair and tired lines on an otherwise youthful face. His brown eyes were bright and comforting, but unfamiliar. He brought a hand down to stroke my face and I jerked away.

My head raced with scenarios involving kidnap, murder, rape. I saw my body dumped in a cemetery, head and hands missing with my teeth punched out. I imagined being trapped in that strange room for the rest of my life. As the worst scenario, his body on top of mine, passed through my mind he turned his attention away from my face and to my leg.

"I'm very sorry I didn't get there sooner, to prevent the fall. Well, I suppose it was a jump. You know – geronimo!" He laughed a little, a sad chuckle. "I thought I had more time." He ran his hand over my arms and my right leg. He was about to check my left leg, until he noticed the tear stains on my cheek. "How bad does it hurt?"

"On a scale of one to five?" I asked, meeting his gaze. His eyes were wide with worry, eyebrows arched and lips set tight. "Ten."

He let out a deep sigh, bringing his hands to his temples and rubbing them. "Okay, okay I know what to do."

"Take me to the hospital!"

"No, not that. That will only make things worse, much worse," he said. He wasn't making any sense and seemed to be in a daze. He stared at the space slightly to the right of my head for a minute, his lips open and his eyes glazed over. But before I had a chance to move, or even think, he shook his head and snapped his fingers together, like he had been hit across the face with an epiphany. "We're going on a little trip. Hold on to something."

"What something?" I asked, gesturing around me. "I'm on the floor and immobilized, does it look like I can hang on to the floor like Peter Parker?"

He sighed, either from exasperation or forgetfulness. "Right well—" he stopped. I could see him chewing on the inside of his cheek, his vision shifted upwards and lost in contemplation. "Here, let me try and move you so you don't get tossed about all wibbly-wobbly." For the first time I noticed his accent, slightly British with a foreign twang. He didn't belong smack in the middle of the US in flatland Nebraska.

He kneeled beside me, sliding his arm under my back and thighs. With a grunt, he lifted me from the floor, trying to adjust me as best he could without causing me any discomfort. He failed, of course, jostling me a bit too much too fast. I closed my eyes tight and fought the urge to cry out, biting down on my lower lip.

"Oh God, I'm sorry," he said, carefully walking me over to the center console in the room. It reached from the floor to ceiling, covered in blinking lights and buttons. It hurt to look at, my head was throbbing and my mind racing. All I knew is that I was in a strange room with a strange man, a broken leg, and a burned down house God knew how far away.

"Here, I'm going to put you down. You see that red handle right there?" he asked, pointing at the instrument. "Grab onto it and don't let go until I tell you to. Do you understand?"

I nodded, biting down on the inside of my lip as he set me on the floor as gingerly as he could. Even with the most careful, controlled movement I couldn't help but wince and struggle to hold in my pained cries.

"Okay, grab hold," he directed. I did, holding on with all my strength. He hit a few buttons on the console, murmuring to himself. "Let's see, it'll be about 2456, maybe 2457 when the technology is finally approved, but let's go a few years later to be safe. Chicago, because that's where the technology will be best regulated, of course, and—"

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"How to heal your leg," he said, dismissing my concern.

"Take me to the hospital," I said, my voice going up and octave.

"If I do that, you'll die!" He shouted, turning to me. "You'll die and then no one will be there to discover that the cure to malignant neoplasm and billions of people will die—"

"Wait," I said, interrupting him again. "Malignant neoplasm? You mean cancer? I discover the cure to cancer?"

"Yes, and right before the number of cancer patients all but quadruples in size. You save so many lives, and I can't allow you to die because of a staph infection at the hospital."

"So take me to a different hospital!"

"It doesn't matter what hospital I take you to. We have to take you to a time where broken bones are easily fixed by a simple injection. A time where hospitals are all but obsolete."

"A time…you mean the future?"

"Yes." He looked at me as if I was a bit dimwitted for not understanding.

"Okay, you must be crazy," I said. I raised my hands defensively, swallowing and trying to shift so I was positioned to escape.

"No, I'm not. Now Geli, if you just listen to me—"

"Wait, what did you just call me?"

"Geli. Isn't that your name?"

"I never told you my name." I looked at the ground, studying the tiled floor. "What-what is your name?"

Before answering, he reached down to me and grabbed my right hand. He guided it back to the red handle, closing my hand over it. "Hold tight," he winked. "My name is the Doctor."

* * *

"How long have you been watching me?" I asked him. We were sitting in the room, which I had learned was called the TARDIS and wasn't really a room at all, but a Police Box from the 1960's. Apparently it was supposed to cloak itself.

He thought for a minute, tapping his finger against his chin, just like I did when I was doing math homework. "Well, I've been watching your life progress almost in bits and pieces. I haven't watching it from start to finish, because time doesn't work that way."

"What do you mean? Of course time works that way. We live event by event."

"That's a common misconception. People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but _actually_, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly…timey wimey…stuff." He patted the console in the middle of the TARDIS. "This baby lets me fly outside that ball and chose when and where exactly I want to go."

"So you just pick a date and boom, you're there?"

"Exactly!" he said, nodding excitedly. "And when I saw your life I was enraptured by you. I saw your birth and your death, pieces of your childhood and more of your adult life. But I also saw what would happen if you went to the hospital after jumping from that burning building and let me tell you, you are too good to die that way."

I stifled a laugh, masking it by coughing into my elbow.

"You see yourself as such a simple, unimportant girl, don't you?" he asked, reaching up to move a piece of hair away from my face.

"Why wouldn't I?" I asked, shifting awkwardly so my body was facing his.

"Because you are so much more than that. To me and to the world."

* * *

I sat on the bench, rubbing my left leg vigorously. Minutes ago I was in unbearable pain, but now my leg was good as new. The mocha colored skin and muscled calf showed no sign of ever being broken. "What kind of black magic fuc—"

"Watch your mouth," the Doctor said, sitting down beside me. He held a milkshake in each hand, offering one to me. I grabbed it, trying to avoid his gaze as I stabbed at it with the spoon stuck in its dairy goodness. "They don't take kind to foul language in Chicago, not after President Snow."

"Like from the Hunger Games?" I asked, incredulous.

"Actually no, he was much worse. He ordered that every third child born was to be killed, simply because he could. He was only elected because of a generation of fan girls totally obsessed with that series who figured they'd meet their own Peeta were he in office."

"Yeah," I said, glancing around guiltily before pointedly taking a bite from the shake. "I probably would have contributed to that."

"No, actually. You were running against him. He got through three terms before he was assassinated and you took over."

"But, there are term limits." I creased my eyebrows, not understanding anything that was going on. So much knowledge, so much of the future, was washing over me at once and I was beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed.

"He got rid of them."

"Oh," I said, nodding my head and staring at the ground, eyes wide and mouth hanging open slightly. "So…"

"So it's very important that you live. That you don't die of staph infection when you are rushed to the hospital. That you live to cure cancer and take over for President Snow when he's offed. When you jumped from that window, you could have caused billions more deaths than your own."

"I suppose that I should thank you, for kidnapping me and dragging me to the future." I looked at him, studying every detail of him. He wore a disheveled pinstripe suit, an askew tie, and a long trench like he was trying to hide his body. His dark eyes were sad, like a man who had seen too much death and war and was still searching for something, or someone.

"Don't, it's something I do all the time. I meet lots of people, see lots of places."

"And you just had to rescue a girl like me from a house fire. Someone who really isn't that important?"

"Not important?"

"The woman I become may be important, but me? Geli Gonzalez? I'm a sixteen year old girl who is struggling to pass AP English, can barely keep her eyes open in class, is over obsessed with British men, and has only ever excelled in band."

"Let me tell you something," he said, leaning forward so his face was inches from mine, his hand on my jaw and turning my head to meet his gaze. "I know that you think you are no more than a young, dumb girl. I know you have a very unhealthy opinion of yourself. You feel you aren't smart enough or good enough or pretty enough or anything enough. I know. But let me tell you something,"

I couldn't break my gaze away from his. When I looked into his eyes, I saw a history deeper than the Atlantic Ocean. One with heartbreak and loneliness, a million lives seen created and destroyed. A million souls lost in the universe, a million planets discovered. But there was only one thing he truly wanted in the entire universe. I didn't know what or who it was, when or where, but I could tell that finding it was the most important thing in his existence.

"I live a lonely existence. I live isolated from the rest. But I have never felt more alone when I see someone who doesn't realize just how much they mean to the universe. Everyone is important. Everyone's existence causes a chain reaction of events. Some are good, some are bad, but all are necessary."

"Like the butterfly effect?"

"Exactly like the butterfly effect," he said, smiling widely at me. He leaned in to me, his eyes still open, and gently brushed his lips against mine. They barely grazed mine, and only lingered for a moment, but even when he pulled away I could still feel their pressure against my mouth. "So, be a butterfly will you, and change the world."

He stood up, grabbing my hand and pulling me up with him. He pressed it against his chest as I regained my balance, still a little off-center after the bone was reset. I left my hand there and felt two rhythmic beating hearts.

My mouth fell open when the pounding met my fingertips and I dropped my gaze to stare at his chest.

"There are two?" I asked, my voice a whisper.

"Two," his voice was just as quiet as mine. "Both beating for 900 years. They beat through everything I have gone through and will continue to beat as I sit and I watch and I wait."

"Wait? Wait for what?"

"I'm not sure." He pressed his lips against my forehead. When he pulled away, he grabbed my hand and led me back to the TARDIS. "One more thing," he said, stopping suddenly as we were about to cross the threshold.

"What is it, Doctor?"

He looked over his shoulder, a sad smile across his face and tears welling in his eyes. "You won't remember any of this."

* * *

I stared down at the letter, adjusting myself on the uncomfortable hotel bed, the itchy quilt irritating me as I struggled to read in peace.

_Geli-_

_I'm sorry that I had to do this, but I was left without a choice. I can't afford to hurt you as I have so many others in the past. You are too special, to me and to the world, to have to suffer that kind of pain. I want you to know how brave you are, how strong you are, how important you are. No matter what, do not forget just what you mean to the universe._

_I'll be watching. Watching and waiting._

_With love,_

_The Doctor._

Confused, I set the note down. It took me three tries to read it all the way through, and now that I had a million questions raced through my mind at once. But I finally settled on the most important one. I heaved a heavy sigh as the words tumbled from my lips.

"Doctor who?"


End file.
